1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to translation supporting apparatus and method and a translation supporting program for translating a document in a certain language into a document in another language. More particularly, the invention relates to translation supporting apparatus and method and a translation supporting program for translating by interlocking a machine translating apparatus with a translation memory device.
2. Description of the Related Arts
Hitherto, as translation supporting apparatuses for translating, for example, an English sentence into a Japanese sentence, a machine translating apparatus, a translation memory device, an electronic dictionary apparatus, an Internet words searching apparatus, an abstract forming apparatus, and the like have been known. The machine translating apparatus is a computer system for translating a certain language into another language. After making a syntax analysis for converting an order of words by paying attention to a grammatical structure of a translation target sentence, a meaning process for translating by considering a meaning of each word on the basis of information in the sentence, or the like is further executed. According to the machine translating apparatus, it is a present situation that a translation precision which is adequate for actual translating work cannot be obtained. However, if the translation is limited to a field in which typical sentence patterns or words appear frequently, a document of an amount which is much larger than an amount of document which can be processed by a human being can be translated by predetermined literary styles and translated words. Sentences and words like a table whose translation words have been predetermined can be efficiently translated at a high precision. The translation memory device accumulates original/translation sentences of translation target sentences and translated sentences into an original/translation sentence database, searches the original/translation sentence database by using the translation target sentence as a search key, and displays the original/translation sentence which coincides with the translation target sentence or the original/translation sentence close to it. The translation memory device is used in the actual translating work and contributes to the improvement of quality such as unity of the literary style and the translation words, or the like. However, translating efficiency is not improved very much. The electronic dictionary apparatus is a supporting apparatus for searching words or their use examples from a CD-ROM or a homepage of the Internet in order to improve efficiency of work for looking up a dictionary. The Internet words searching apparatus is a search engine or the like and is a supporting apparatus for searching a document or the like including a word from a homepage of the Internet by using such a word as a search key. The abstract forming apparatus forms an abstract of a document as a target when a large amount of translating work is done. By obtaining the abstract, the translation can be made easy.
However, in such conventional translation supporting apparatuses, the apparatuses such as machine translating apparatus, translation memory device, electronic dictionary apparatus, Internet words searching apparatus, and abstract forming apparatus exist separately. Even if they are combined and the translating work is executed, sufficient efficiency of the translating work cannot be realized for the following reasons. First, unless the translation words searched from the electronic dictionary apparatus or Internet words searching apparatus are registered as a dictionary into the machine translating apparatus, they cannot be used for a machine translation. There is a problem such that it takes much labor and time for registering them into the dictionary. According to the translation memory device, a large amount of original/translation sentences are accumulated into the original/translation database and used for search. However, original/translation sentence information accumulated into the original/translation sentence database cannot be taken in as it is because its data format is different from each other, so that it cannot be used by the machine translating apparatus. According to the translation memory device, the translation target sentence is used as a search key and only the matching of a surface layer level can be obtained between the translation target sentence and the original/translation sentence of the original/translation database. Therefore, the original/translation sentence to be inherently searched in consideration of a syntax is buried. Further, since the translation memory device is a mere search system, for example, even in case of a sentence in which one word is wrong and which can be translated if such a wrong word is automatically changed, a search result has to be manually corrected.